Not to mention your credit card transactions. If you buy a "grand slam" breakfast at Denny's and you pay by credit card, the NSA knows about it.
If you want your work to be safe from Federal intrusion, you need to disconnect your computer from the Internet. And maybe, for correspondence, you might think about going back to using snail mail.
That President Obama is now heavily invested in all of the intrusive bullshit that he used to speak out against when Bush was doing it is a point that is blindingly obvious. We might as well have had Dick Cheney stick around for a couple more terms, for all of the concern about preserving Americans' freedoms and liberties that this current administration is showing.
It is really sad. This government was established by law (the constitution) to uphold the law, and some basic but precious freedoms. The 'framers' tried to make the laws plain to read but lawyers seem to have befuddled that.
ReplyDeleteNow because of "fear"(terrorists) and profit, we have allowed these laws to be disregarded.
I was taught from a young age to reject fears but respect the laws and now as a country we have done the exact opposite of that.
I so feel sorry for my kids and grandkids and great grandkids.
This, is not America as I was taught. Not at all.
w3ski
Regarding the "go back to snail mail" comment, do you wonder why the USPS is so much under fire right now, to the point of being forced into insolvency despite having an operational profit? Hmm....
ReplyDeleteOther than the point that USPS is a government corporation that has lots of decent-paying jobs for a unionized work force?
DeleteComrade, that's more the reason the Bushies were so hot to privatize ATC. 9/11 made it difficult to do, so they just swallowed Flight Service as a tid-bit. Meanwhile, the controllers are about 80-85% Union nationwide...think that puts a bullseye on us?
DeleteBTW, hows the LockMart FSS working for you guys...sucks for us, that's for sure!
I don't call them anymore. I use DUATS. I had for decades, but when the FSS was a somewhat local thing, I'd call them, because the FSS guys had decent local knowledge of conditions.
DeleteI stopped calling them on the third time when I had to tell them where my home airport was and what were the nearest reporting stations. All they are, now, is a bunch of "rip and read" types and I can do that for myself.
whatta bunch of ungrateful bastids - it's all done for your own good, dontya know
ReplyDeleteIf you really want to stir the pot a bit, attack a few k's worth of random number to every email you send.
ReplyDeleteAlso, for any emacs users out there,
m-x spook
FWIW, they know you used your card at Denny's and they know how much the transaction was for, but they don't know _what_ the transaction was for.
ReplyDeleteNot that that makes it okay.
The information on what you ordered is in the point-of-sale system at Denny's. So is that system networked with Denny's supply system and how secure is all that?
DeleteI'm guessing that it is networked, that Denny's corporate can see how all of their stores' sales are doing, what's getting ordered. How hard would it be to crossreference that data with the credit card sales?
What I'm getting to is that while I can't conceive of why the Feds would want to know whether or not you ordered the "red, white & blue" special, if they wanted to, they probably could pretty easily.
POS systems are not often directly linked to the credit card processing system. The only data the card processor gets is the amount.
ReplyDeleteNow, if the POS system is connected to the intertubes, teh feds could see that John Q. Public spent $5.17 at Denny's at 0117hrs on 6/12/13, and then query the POS system to see what was in any sales for $5.17 @ 0117hrs on that date.
I don't know why they'd do that, unless they had nearly unlimited data storage, powerful cross-indexed databases, and a reason to keep an eye on your cholesterol levels, but that would be as crazy and far-fetched as a dystopian future where you weren't allowed to bring nail clippers on airplanes...
(I shouldn't say "not often linked" but rather "not linked in that fashion".)
ReplyDeleteI don't know why they'd do that
ReplyDeleteMaybe if they want to determine health insurance risks?